The BBC Proms has announced that it will be adding Japan to its growing list of international tours, following Australia in 2016 and Dubai in 2017.

Thomas Dausgaard will lead the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in concerts across the six-day festival in Tokyo and Osaka, in the orchestra’s first trip to Japan.

As with BBC Proms Australia and Dubai, the festival will feature the traditional elements of the BBC Proms, including the First and Last Nights. The concerts will be recorded by BBC Radio 3 for BBC Sounds.

The full programme will be announced in early 2019.

‘We are delighted to both be making our first trip to Japan in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s history and to represent the BBC Proms while we are there,’ says Dominic Parker, director of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. ‘This tour comes at a time when the world will be focusing on the build-up to 2020 in Tokyo.’

For the first time, cameras have been allowed access to the Choir of King's College, Cambridge's annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. To celebrate ther service's 100th anniversary, BBC Two will be following the choir's rehearsal process and the preparations for the big day.

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols began 100 years ago in the wake of the First World War, as a reaction to the horrors of war and the need to unite the community in faith.

The BBC Two programme will be shown on 21 December at 7pm.

This year's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day on Radio 3 (with full organ voluntaries).

Read more about the centenary of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Christmas 2018 issue of BBC Music Magazine.

This week's free download is an arrangement of Debussy's Minstrels, one of his Préludes, performed by Quatuor Debussy and recorded on the Harmonia Mundi label. It was awarded four stars in the December issue of BBC Music Magazine.

DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS:

If you'd like to enjoy our free weekly download simply log in or sign up to our website.

Once you've done that, return to this page and you'll be able to see a 'Download Now' button on the picture above – simply click on it to download your free track.

If you experience any technical problems please email support@classical-music.com. Please reference 'Classical Music Free Download', and include details of the system you are using and your location. If you are unsure of what details to include please take a screenshot of this page.

Every Christmas, we invite a leading composer to write a carol for our readers.

This year's is written by composer Dobrinka Tabakova and you can download the score for the carol here.

We hope you'll include this carol in your service or concert. We'd love to hear your performances, so send any audio or video files or links to music@classical-music.comand we'll share them with our followers and readers on our website and social feeds.

A few words from composer Dobrinka Tabakova...

When I was invited to write a carol for BBC Music Magazine, I had just completed one for the Truro Cathedral Nine Lessons and Carols service and had a previous advent work close to mind – my Alma Redemptoris Mater for the choir of Merton College, Oxford.

Both of these works were conceived to be performed in a sacred context. In this new carol, I still wanted to retain some liturgical mystery, but add another, more playful element.

While researching texts for the Truro carol, I came across Ralph Dunstan’s collection The Cornish Songbook and was drawn to one of the carols there: Heavenly sound.

As well as the upbeat good wishes, it was probably the ‘Hark, hark’ which adds a percussive punctuation and lifts the words, and gave me the idea of a (gentle) clapping counterpoint.

The image I had for the performance of my carol was more social – a Christmas sing-along at home or, perhaps, a slightly eccentric group of enthusiastic amateurs singing from smart-phones in a pub (I know a few of those).

The general mood is that of a contemporary round. The words dictated the rhythm of the carol, which I initially wrote in a stream of changing time signatures.

The ‘look’ of the carol didn’t quite sit with the more laid-back image I had of people singing it, so I thought either to dispense with bar lines or simply not have time signatures and leave the bar lines to give some structure to the melodies.

Performance Notes

One of the things I’ve noticed when people are faced with a page of different time signatures is that they make the music quite spiky and bouncy. That is not my intention here, and I hope that the lack of time signatures will put emphasis on phrasing rather than rhythm.

In some places the melodies are quite long, so there will need to be stagger breathing – where each singer from the same line takes a breath at different times, creating the illusion that they are all singing one continuous melody with no break. Those places are marked with a broken slur where a natural breath would be taken.

The clapping is also not compulsory – in fact it would be better to just have some singers clap – and it’s always the same pattern, which would ideally be learned by heart.

The section from bar 77 (‘Let mortals catch…’) has a very low alto line, which may be welcomed by some, but it’s fine to have those who find it too low to sing the soprano line and add tenors to the alto line.

I do hope my carol brings you joy. As much as the title ‘Good-will to men and peace on Earth’ may be a nod to past seasonal tunes, I couldn’t think of a better wish now and for the future.

It’s officially the festive season, so we’re all finally permitted to don our finest reindeer jumpers, have mugs of mulled wine thrust upon us on entry into any room, and generally indulge in all things rich and fruity (that counts for food and music in equal measures).

To coincide with our Christmas playlist on Apple Music (available here), the BBC Music Magazine team have chosen their favourite seasonal pieces.

‘Troika’ from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite conjures up a crisp, bell-filled wintry scene and fits this time of year perfectly. After a grand brass introduction, the famous fourth movement ‘Troika’ breezes along, creating the impression of a fast-moving sleigh. The music was written for a Soviet film in 1933 – when Prokofiev returned to his homeland after a ten-year residency in Paris – and charts the life of a fictional military officer.

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day by John Gardner

There seems to be a dearth of cheery Christmas choral works – most tend to be reflective rather than joyful (think Warlock, Howells, Michael Head, etc etc). But John Gardner’s sprightly two-minute burst of joy is inspired, its off-set rhythms and constantly changing time-signatures giving a wonderful sense of forward movement. Gardner, born in 1917, was a prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental music, but it’s for this delightful Christmas miniature that he’s almost solely known today.

Adams’s nativity oratorio is one of the more unusual retellings of the Christmas story. The text is drawn from various biblical sources as well as a number of poems written by Latin American women, and the musical language is littered with inflections of Latin American folk music. Its theatrical writing is John Adams to a T, and the floating harmonies and unusual rhythms in this movement are warm and otherworldly. The trio of countertenors make this movement completely magical.

Amid all the choral hurly-burly of Britten’s wonderfully invigorating A Ceremony of Carols comes the moment of extraordinary stillness that is the Interlude for solo harp. Based on the plainchant that we hear at the beginning of the work, this is music that reminds me of a frozen, deserted landscape, in which the only movement is the occasional drip from a slowly melting icicle. It’s extraordinarily atmospheric, and an essential part of my festive listening each year.

O come, O come Emmanuel

If I haven't heard or sung O come, O come Emmanuel at least once over Christmas, even an extra mince pie won't stop me feeling short-changed on the festive front. This haunting hymn for Advent and Christmas has an ancient quality that I love. The text and tune developed separately through the centuries, and various versions exist, but the familiar words-and-music combination in English came into being in 1851. Rejoice, Rejoice!

Fantasia (1940)

As well as mop-wielding Mickey Mouse, Disney’s feature-length cartoon has a gorgeously animated section devoted to The Nutcracker, including music from the Sugar-Plum Fairy, the Arabian Dance, the Russian Trepak and the Waltz of the Flowers.

Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001)

Further cinematic Nutcracker delights, as a computer-animated Barbie embarks on a ballet adventure. It is, needless to say, all very pink, though our heroine does dance a neat little Sugar-Plum Fairy routine.

The Simpsons Christmas Stories (2005)

‘I hope I never hear that God-awful Nutcracker music again,’ complains a typically grumpy Homer Simpson. And guess what comes next? Yup, the Simpsons cast sings a Christmas medley to the tune of the Act I March.

Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite (1960)

Few musicians have fused the worlds of classical and jazz as sublimely as The Duke, whose 1960 take on Tchaikovsky comes complete with natty titles such as ‘Sugar Rum Cherry’ and ‘Toot Toot Tootie Toot’.

Nut Rocker (1962)

Two years after Duke Ellington, American rockers B. Bumble & the Stingers were inspired to create their own high-octane arrangement of The Nutcracker’s March, a version that’s been covered by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, among others.

Cadbury's Fruit & Nut Advert (1976 etc)

From Frank Muir pootling around in a punt in 1976 to a 1980s office worker being serenaded by a singing chocolate bar and her hunky-chunky almonds, Cadbury’s brilliant ad campaign had us all singing ‘Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case’ to the Dance of the Reed Pipes.

Tetris (1989)

Hospital For Overacting (1970)

Here’s one for sharp-eyed Nutcracker spotters, courtesy of Monty Python’s 1970 sketch. As Graham Chapman enters the Richard III Ward at the Royal Hospital for Overacting, a group of King Mice pass in the other direction.

1. Bob Chilcott: The shepherd’s carol(2000)

This was written for The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge to a lovely anonymous modern text – the author should step up and take credit. Chilcott’s music, of magical stillness and simplicity, brings a tear to the eye every time.

5. John David/Philip Lawson: Born on a new day (2000)

This simple, touching carol came into being when King’s Singer Philip Lawson wrote a Christmas text to John David’s 1990 song ‘You are the new day’. With Peter Knight’s perfect choral arrangement, a new Christmas classic was born.